Michael, 59, has been sleeping in the same office doorway in Fleet Street, in the City of London, for more than two years. He beds down on two pieces of cardboard, and is gone with his bedding and belongings before workers arrive in the morning. "It's safe and clean, and I usually get a good night's sleep", he says.

Last week, Michael was repeatedly woken at 2.30am by the police, accompanied by council street cleaners. "Two policemen asked my name and date of birth and did a check on me, then instructed me to pack up my things and move on," he says. "When I'd done that, the road sweeping operators poured lots of water where I'd been sleeping."

This controversial practice of "wetting down" was introduced in the Square Mile in April by the City of London Corporation, in partnership with the police and homelessness charity Broadway. But following protests by a local church group and housing campaigners, Operation Poncho was temporarily suspended in July pending an evaluation of its impact.

The Rev Simon Perry, of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, says he was "very disappointed" to learn that wetting down had resumed without any consultation and ahead of a meeting in October to discuss the way forward. "It's sub-human, waking people up to force them to accept your help," he insists. "You can't go up to someone who is smoking, pull a cigarette out of their mouth and tell them it's for their own good."

Howard Sinclair, chief executive of Broadway, says: "The whole point is to make it uncomfortable for people to sleep on the streets, to make them confront the fact that it is not doing them any good, and to engage with services."

Rough sleepers bed down for the night. Photograph: Bloomsbury Baptist Church

Broadway is contracted by the City of London Corporation to send outreach workers ahead of the hosing to try to get rough sleepers into hostels, or drug or alcohol services. Sinclair says , as a result of Operation Poncho, 99 people were helped to get off the streets between April and August, compared with 46 during the same period a year ago. "Some have gone into temporary accommodation, some have returned to their home countries, others have been put into detoxification or rehabilitation programmes," he says.

But critics of wetting down say it takes no account of east Europeans, who are not eligible for state-funded help. "It takes trust and long-term befriending to encourage people alienated from society to take up appropriate offers of help," says Alistair Murray, regions coordinator at Housing Justice. "This is a barbaric way to address the issue and will be counter-productive by driving people further away from services."

The City of London is not the first area to drench rough sleepers' bedding spots. In Westminster, the council denies the practice - which it calls "hot washing" - is intended to remove rough sleepers from the streets. But a study published last year by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that "hot washing" was employed as a measure to deal with problematic street culture.

Sarah Johnsen, co-author of the report, The Impact of Enforcement on Street Users in England, says hot washing on its own failed to tackle the problem. "All it did was disperse rough sleepers and this can distance vulnerable people from services," she says. The report concludes enforcement tools can motivate some rough sleepers but only if "carefully integrated with individually tailored and immediately accessible supportive interventions".

Councils are under pressure to meet government targets to have zero people sleeping rough by 2012, and police forces are also under pressure to get rough sleepers off the streets. Superintendent Lorraine Cussen, who oversees the Metropolitan Police's involvement in Operation Poncho, says: "The whole focus of policing now is to respond to what communities want. Businesses and residents in the area are concerned that groups of rough sleepers who are drinking can become violent. The police's role is to facilitate the corporation to clean the street, and for officers to make contact with rough sleepers who need to access services."

Cussen, who says that east Europeans are put in contact with an organisation that could help them return home, confirmed wetting down had resumed at two hot spots, without consulting critics, following a significant rise in numbers in August after the practice was halted.

Entrenched

"Broadway outreach workers targeted groups of entrenched rough sleepers for the two weeks of September," Cussen says. "Then, last week, the cleaning department and police went out to clean two specific areas, where rough sleepers are known to congregate. Operation Poncho partners agreed to stop the total 'washdown' of the City, but not to stop targeting specific areas." She adds: "We are keen to hear about alternative solutions. We have to take some action."

Sinclair says, in the months ahead, Broadway will work with the police and corporation "to make sure rough sleepers do not simply disappear behind doorways, but are cared for and helped to start rebuilding their lives".

For Michael, this means many more disrupted nights' sleep. So will it force him into a hostel? "No," he says. "I just wait for them to leave and put my cardboard back on the floor and go back to sleep."